Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: Yep, Beacon Was A Mistake

As promised, Mark Zuckerberg's D interview came and went without
any booing or hissing. Also absent: Anything of much interest,
save for the fact that we got to see how a 24-year-old paper
billionaire comports himself in front of a high-end, high-powered
audience.

The nuggets:

Beacon was a mistake

Mark insists that Facebook is a technology company, not a
media company.

He professes disinterest in either a Microsoft sale or an
IPO.

Transcript follows, video highlights at end.

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Two things we can tell you in advance about Mark Zuckerberg's
appearance at the D
conference: It is almost certainly going to go a bit smoother
than his last high-profile
conference appearance. And he won't be wearing his trademark
sandals -- he's been wandering the halls of the Four Seasons for
the past two days in some kind of loafers. Oh -- and for the
record:
newish COO Sheryl Sandberg's coming onstage with Mark, too.

Kara talking about how much she likes to write about Facebook.
Sheryl "Yeah, we noticed". More about Kara: Apologizes for
calling Mark "Toddler CEO". Will now call him "24-year-old CEO".
Still waiting for question. Coming....coming...coming...OK: "What
is Facebook right now?"

Zuckerberg: We help people share themselves. With photos and
stuff like that.

K: Right, but everything you do is replicated throughout the Web.
So what's different.

Z: Distribution -- they can share with their network. This trend
of people sharing about themselves online has been around
"forever". Like back when I was in high school (in the 90s). AOL
was something that was interesting to me when I was in high
school. I hacked stuff on AOL back then. A lot of my friends
learned how to develop things by building stuff on top of AOL.

K: You got instant attention when you moved to the Valley. What
was that like?

Z: Didn't get that much attention when we started. When we got to
30 colleges, decided to invest one summer. Wanted to get away
from Harvard. I have a funny story about that -- but not sharing
it. Came to Valley for the summer, never left.

K: So what's the funny story?

Z: Blank look.

K: How was college for you. How much did your experience parallel
Bill Gates time there?

Z: I skipped a core curriculum class about Rome so I could build
Facebook. In time for the final project, I built a "study tool"
with links, and somehow got my fellow students to do my work for
me.

S: Goes thru resume: Harvard, Bain McKinsey, Harvard
MBA, Treasury dept under Clinton -- also has a funny story about
that but won't share it, "that not being the topic for today."

K: OK, enough about that. Back to Mark. Did you have a business
card that said. "I'm the CEO, bitch".

Z: That was a joke someone made for me.

K: Why are you sticking around? Why not get company going and
hand off to pro manager?

Z: We're building a bunch of stuff. Let's us build lots of things
that let people share, share, share. Share, share, share.

K: That's not really an answer.

Z: We're only four years in. Building a team.

K: What have you learned about the?

Z: Share, share, share. Give people control, and they'll share
more information about themselves. You didn't ask, but I'll tell
you: "Beacon was a big mistake for us", in a lot of different
ways. But we learned an important lesson about giving people more
control.

K: Was Beacon really a mistake? Seems like a worthwhile
experiment.

Z: Yes. The UI could have been better and we needed to be
clearer.

K: Sheryl, why did you come aboard?

S: Exciting, etc. Also, been at Google 6.5 years.

K: You opened up platform. Super smart idea. Talk about that,
what worked, what didn't.

Z: (Gotta say, think Mark overpracticed for this one. Have heard
"share information in different ways" way too many times
already.) We didn't build a music feature because we figured the
Web had plenty. But iLike a huge hit on FB. Same with games. So
that's interesting.

K: OK. What's with widgets. Why aren't they useful?

Z: Things that don't look useful can actually be useful.

S: If millions of people are using these apps, doesnt' that make
them valuable?

K: OK, so they're entertaining. But how do you translate that
into a "new advertising paradigm" like the one Mark talked about
last fall?

S: Majority of online spend is demand fufillment. You
know what you want, you seek it out. But most advertising is
demand creation, and no one really knows how to do that
online. But I think FB can figure this out - we know
lots about users, and can use that data to work with advertisers
to provide them with great stuff. We can also work with
engagement. Ben & Jerry's promotion where users sent 500,000
free cones to each other. Within 24 hours, we created 53 million
impression for Ben & Jerry's. Not all advertising on FB has
that opportunity. But it's a pretty unique opportunity.

K: You're a media company.

Z: No, we're a technology company.

K: No, you're a media company: You build an audience, and sell it
to advertisers.

Z: Nope. Technology. That's what we're focused on - building
technology, building things.

S: We think technology can speed up interactions between
consumers and advertisers.

K: Talk about upcoming change in platform.

Z: Original platform was designed around people installing boxes.
(Basically, saying too much clutter). Moving away from
"box-based" system. Now applications that are more engaging and
that users trust more are going to spread through the system.

K: Company's growing up. That must be hard on original employees
as you scale, brining in pro managers. How's that going?

Z: Hmm.

S: I'm making trains run on time.

K: Want to sell to MSFT?

Z: No, you know that by now.

K: Seriously? What do you want? What if they offer $15B?

Z: Non-answer. End goal for us isn't to sell or IPO. It's to help
the users.

K: Can they sell without your say-so?

Z: I don't think so.

K: Actually, they can't. Many people can learn from you, in that
respect. Anyway, how's the Microsoft relationship going?

S: I was just there [in Redmond]. At Google, you don't normally
go up to see Microsoft. Partnerships are important.

K: How's Google relationship?

Z: We talk all the time. Really, we do. Eric and Larry came over
to my apartment, but I didn't have enough furniture, so Eric sat
on the floor. But seriously, love to work with them. Would be
good to talk to them about OpenSocial and things like like. Will
have to see how that evolves. We want to help "users share
information in different ways."

K: Where do you imagine yourself in 5 years?

Z: Want to help people "share more information"

Q from the awesome Barry Sonnenfeld: My
15-year-old daughter is on your site, has no sense of privacy. Do
you feel that you're creating a generation where there's no fear
of government, no fear of loss of privacy -- a "sad, dreary
future for our children"?

Z: Share, share, share. Share, share, share. You can set up
filters, setting so you can figure out who you want to share,
share, share your information with. And even though it seems like
daughter doesn't care, a huge amount of our users are tweaking
their settings. So they're aware of it.

Q: What are you doing for oldsters like me, who are more than
twice your age?

Z: What we're doing should be applicable to people all over the
world, no matter how old they are. I was just in Istanbul. I
watched people use Facebook there. People have built local apps
there. I didn't understand them, because I don't speak the
language. But that's what we're interested in them.

Q: Name 3 apps you'd like to see that don't exist.

Z: Something for sports would be interesting. A ton of people are
interested in that. Also politics. Also religon.

Q: How open are you, exactly, compared to the likes of Ning?

Z: Relatively open, increasing as time goes on.

Q: Joe Menn from LA Times. I worry about apps looking at my
personal information. Do you police that?

S: You have the option of giving the developer the info, so they
can make it useful. We have strict policies. We've seen
violations, and violaters get suspended. We police them, and the
community polices them for us.

Q: I've got 500 Facebook friends that I don't really know. I'm
not really sure what I'm sharing with them. Can I have "friends"
and "acquiantances"? And what about Facebok fatigue in general.